Restructuring Across Three Countries on a Single Timetable

Each country has a different legal clock, and one of them is longer than the entire plan.

• Leeds (140 redundancies at one establishment): this crosses the threshold for large-scale collective redundancies, triggering a 45-day collective consultation period with the recognized union before any dismissal takes effect. Thirty days is below the statutory minimum. The pending collective grievance compounds it - a union already in dispute will test whether consultation is genuine.
• Lyon (60 of 210 in a company of this size): this crosses the threshold requiring a formal redundancy plan with economic rationale, redeployment measures and staff-representative consultation. The newly elected staff body must be informed and consulted, and the process runs over months, with labour administration oversight. France alone exceeds 11 weeks.
• Hamburg (45 of 300): this crosses the mass-layoff threshold for an establishment of that size, requiring works council consultation and notification of the Federal Employment Agency. The works council has not been informed at all - a fundamental defect.

The synchronized announcement is the classic error. The German and French processes cannot legally be synchronized because each requires its representative body to be informed and consulted before employees learn of the decision. Announcing all three sites on the same morning guarantees that Hamburg and Lyon employees hear it before their representatives have been consulted - converting a manageable restructuring into a challengeable one. International consistency of rationale and messaging is desirable; synchronized legal steps are not.

Bottom line for the CEO: the 11-week timetable is not achievable. Say so now, in writing, with the per-country minimum timelines.

Sequence:

1. Legal obligation map per country completed and reviewed by local counsel, before any communication is drafted.
2. Fix the decision and its rationale so it can be presented consistently - what is closing, why, what alternatives were considered, and the selection criteria for affected roles. In France the economic rationale must survive external scrutiny, so it must be defensible, not just internally plausible.
3. Inform and consult the representative bodies: Hamburg works council, Lyon staff body, and the Leeds union at the earliest point of collective consultation.
4. Employee announcements - Hamburg only after the works council has been informed and consulted; Lyon after the staff body has been informed and consulted; Leeds at the formal start of collective consultation. These will fall on different dates. That is correct.
5. External and customer communications last.

Risk of informing Hamburg employees first:

• The works council can assert a breach of its co-determination rights and seek relief in the labour court to stop or reverse the measure. A restructuring launched over the works council's objection can be unwound after the fact.
• Notification to the Federal Employment Agency must reflect the works council's position; a defective notification creates separate exposure.
• The damage is durable. The works council consents to future changes - the next restructuring, changes to working time, social plan negotiations - and an employer that bypassed it once will pay for that in every subsequent negotiation.

Practical rule: the single mobility of message is fine; the single date is not. Have one accountable in-country lead per site and hold the global announcement until the slowest consultation step is cleared.

Ranked by financial and legal exposure:

1. France - highest. An inadequate social plan can fail to gain approval and be challenged, suspending the process. Exposure: severance well above statutory minimum, redeployment obligations, months of delay, and the cost of re-running the process. Mitigation: budget above-minimum severance and meaningful redeployment measures up front; do not treat the plan as a cost to minimise. Have counsel test the economic rationale against what a representative body will argue.
2. Germany - second. Works council challenge plus social plan costs, and the mass-layoff notification. Mitigation: inform and negotiate in good faith; treat the social plan as a negotiated budget line, not an afterthought; do not announce before consultation.
3. UK - third but with a sharp exposure. Failure to consult properly for collective redundancies exposes the employer to a protective award of up to 90 days' pay for each affected employee. With 140 staff, that is a large, calculable number. The pending collective grievance raises the chance the union frames the redundancies as victimization, so keep the grievance process formally separate and documented. Mitigation: start consultation early, give real information, respond to proposals in writing.
4. Cross-border inconsistency - the sleeper risk. If the French rationale is 'the site is unviable' while the German rationale is 'efficiency', a works council will find and use the discrepancy. Mitigation: one approved rationale document, translated, used everywhere, with a decision log recording who approved what and when.
5. Reputational and customer risk, especially with a union dispute already public at Leeds.

Governance: a weekly programme board with in-country leads, a single decision log, and a standing contingency reserve sized against item 1. Report to the CEO that the 11-week date is the largest single risk in the plan, because it will push people toward skipping consultation - which is precisely what generates the largest liabilities.